Word: petroleum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...everyone who has bitter memories of the oil shocks of the 1970s, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries drove oil prices to intolerable heights, today's bargain-basement values seem like sweet vengeance indeed. The U.S. has learned once again to love cheap energy, and why not? Gasoline and home-heating fuels are in plentiful supply. Inexpensive oil helped keep * inflation last year at its lowest level in 25 years, sent interest rates to nine-year troughs and aided in sustaining a four-year-old economic expansion...
...thrill of cheap energy may prove perilously intoxicating. As U.S. energy consumption increases, imports are reaching alarming levels. At the same time, depressed oil prices have caused U.S. petroleum production and exploration to dwindle dangerously. This means, experts caution, that America is setting a time bomb. The scary possibility is that by the mid-1990s, as the U.S. becomes dependent on foreign oil for more and more of its consumption, OPEC could suddenly and steeply raise prices, throwing the economy into chaos. Warns Interior Secretary Donald Hodel: "OPEC is being placed back in the driver's seat...
OPEC has plenty of plans for a comeback but is having no luck making them work. Only three months ago, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries seemed to be regaining a grip on world oil prices. The group's agreement in December on a 7% production cut, to 15.8 million bbl. a day, managed to push prices even higher than OPEC's goal of $18 per bbl. But by last week it was clear that the group's clout had slipped once again, as world oil prices dipped as low as $15 per bbl. Several OPEC countries appeared...
Sometimes a city is hurt when its leading company becomes embroiled in a takeover fight. As headquarters for Phillips Petroleum (1986 revenues: $10 billion), Bartlesville, Okla. (pop. 35,000), paid its own price after the eighth largest U.S. oil company fought off takeover raids by T. Boone Pickens Jr. in 1984 and by Carl Icahn the following year. Though Phillips kept its independence, it took on some $4.5 billion in new debts and was forced to shed $2 billion in assets in a subsequent reorganization. Partly as a result, Phillips employment in Bartlesville, which had peaked...
...this year, but Jean-Marie Chevalier, professor of economics at the University of Paris Nord, contends that it will be more like 2%. He cites soft consumer demand at home and still softer exports as causes for concern. Traditionally, some 30% of French exports go to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other developing nations where lower oil revenues and large debt loads have sharply curtailed purchasing power. As a result, France's export earnings are bound to suffer. Sluggish growth may nudge up unemployment from 10.6% to 11% this year, Chevalier said...